Eric left her to her ridiculous martyrdom of efficiency and let his eyes wander round the empty office. A pile of posters lying on a desk for the fun-run that was already under way suggested that the publicity department hadn’t been bothering their ass much. Eric was annoyed. He’d put that poster together with the designer. Two colours, advertising the fancy-dress race down Beaver, prizes highlighted in red. Why bother? The lazy bastards obviously hadn’t distributed them to the local hotels and shops as ordered. They’d be lucky if anybody showed at all, even with this tiny break in the weather. Betsy finished one call, punched up the other, dealt with it and hung up.

Eric pointed at the posters. ‘So are the public just expected to come in here and take one? I thought a poster meant you posted it someplace.’

Betsy looked at him with disdain, sliding a pencil behind her ear. ‘They’re left-overs.’

‘So they posted them all over Silver?’

‘All over Silver and Stoke. Even took some to Calgary.’

Eric gave in. If he needed someone to take out his temper on today, Betsy wasn’t going to let it be her.

‘That new guy up at Beaver too?’

‘Guess so.’

The phone warbled again and she picked it up, still looking directly at Eric. ‘Silver Ski Company, Betsy speaking. How may I help you?’

Eric got up and wandered over to Sitconski’s desk. Looked like he’d been working on the rota, very thoroughly indeed. Beside two names there were pencil marks. Of course there was nothing odd about making pencil notes beside names that needed attention. There was plenty wrong with making marks so hard that they ripped through the paper and left shards of broken lead embedded in the paper like shrapnel.

‘Hey, hey, hey! Here comes Sean! Would you get that!’

The high speed quad delivered an eighteen-year-old boy on skis dressed inexpertly as an Indian chief. His gaudy feather head-dress fluttered madly in the breeze, and a makeshift loincloth that was wrapped around tight ski pants was lifted to his friends in a burlesque gesture of vulgarity that passed as a greeting. Eight people hollered and fell about shrieking with laughter as the blond boy skied up to them performing a mock war-dance with knees wreathed in neck-ties, then toasting them with a bottle of cheap whisky he fished surreptitiously from his pocket.

‘Shit on you white men. Me pray to um spirit for heap big powder. Me drink fire water. Make me win dumb fucking race.’

The gang of laughing youths were in no position to mock. Two were dressed as cowboys, one as a clown, three girls attempted to look like Playboy bunnies, diminishing the effect by the thermal tops they had on under the bustiers, and the remaining two, a couple, had made little more effort than buying masks of a Jurassic Park velociraptor and ET.